Limited nucleotide pools restrict Epstein–Barr virus-mediated B-cell immortalization

Activation of cellular oncogenes as well as infection with tumor viruses can promote aberrant proliferation and activation of the host DNA damage response. Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) infection of primary human B cells induces a transient period of hyper-proliferation, but many of these infected cells succumb to an ataxia telangiectasia mutated/checkpoint kinase 2 (ATM/Chk2)-mediated senescence-like growth arrest. In this study, we assessed the role of DNA replicative stress and nucleotide pool levels in limiting EBV-infected B-cell outgrowth. We found that EBV triggered activation of the ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3-related (ATR) signaling pathway in the early rapidly proliferating cells, which were also significantly more sensitive to inhibition of the ATR pathway than late attenuated proliferating cells. Through nuclear halo assays, we determined that early EBV-infected cells displayed increased replicative stress and DNA damage relative to late proliferating cells. Finally, we found that early after infection, hyper-proliferating B cells exhibited limited deoxyribonucleotide triphosphate (dNTP) pools compared with late proliferating and EBV-immortalized lymphoblastoid cell lines with a specific loss of purine dNTPs. Importantly, supplementation with exogenous nucleosides before the period of hyper-proliferation markedly enhanced B-cell immortalization by EBV and rescued replicative stress. Together our results suggest that purine dNTP biosynthesis has a critical role in the early stages of EBV-mediated B-cell immortalization.